How We Got Here
by rosabelle317
Summary: [Set after "To the Tenth Power," and written mostly to answer my own "how did that even happen" questions.] "I gotta ask," Damon said. "Why a museum?" "You're asking the wrong person." Andros tilted his head in the direction of DECA's nearest eye. "It was her idea."


**Notes:** Okay, so. I started to write a story about Karone after Lost Galaxy, but I kept getting sidetracked by questions like "why is the Megaship even on Terra Venture?" and "how the hell did the Astro Rangers get anywhere without it?" so then I had to write _this_ story first, to answer those questions.

I didn't do a full rewatch of LG before writing this (I did watch the relevant episode along with a handful of others), so... if something is wrong, a) my bad and b) we will just assume that this is an AU.

 **How We Got Here**

 **rosabelle**

Andros wasn't snooping. She was his ship, after all.

... well. KO-35 had taken some convincing on that point when they'd found out that Andros had donated (in a manner of speaking) the Megaship to Earth's fledgling space colony, but as far as Andros was concerned, the Megaship _was_ his ship, temporarily re-assigned to someone else's mission.

So he wasn't really doing anything impermissible or intrusive, running a quick diagnostics check on the engines while the rest of his team were shown the Terra Venture nightlife by the Galaxy Rangers. Nightlife wasn't really his scene to begin with, and he was just occupying himself with something until they got back. Depending on how you looked at it, he was doing them a favor. He doubted they really knew the ins and outs of keeping the Megaship in her best shape.

"Are you spying, Andros?"

"No," he said, glancing up briefly from his tablet. Above the engine room walkway one of DECA's eyes watched him, blinking in a way that was either amused or reproachful. He never could tell. "I'm just... checking."

"I assure you," DECA said, "that were any of the Megaship's systems in need of maintenance, I would notice well before you thought to run a diagnostics report."

"Maybe you wouldn't," he said. "Ashley says that's why people go to doctors on Earth."

"And have you been to a doctor recently, Andros?" DECA asked, in a tone he always thought was much drier than anything she should've been capable of.

"That's not the point."

"It seems relevant."

"Well... it's not."

After a pause, DECA offered, "You seem well."

"Yeah, well," he said, matching her with wryness of his own. "You _are_ fully psychologically certified. I guess you'd know."

"I'm certainly highly qualified," she agreed readily. "But I think it would've been apparent even to someone with fewer credentials that you were distressed, when we last talked."

"Karone went back to KO-35," he said, lowering his eyes to his tablet again. "She never knew what to do with herself on Earth. Zhane went with her."

He'd meant it with all his heart, when he'd said that his home was with Ashley. But it was with Zhane and Karone too, and he couldn't leave behind the sister he'd spent all his life looking for. Not for anyone. Even if she said he didn't need to follow her.

"Is Ashley still not amenable to relocating?"

"She's... not _not_ amenable." Andros shrugged, and flicked his fingertip against the tablet. He set another test to run, partly for the sake of having something to do and partly because he knew it would distract DECA. "That's not the problem. There's no problem."

"Your tone suggests evidence to the contrary," DECA remarked, not as distracted as Andros had hoped. "Are you worried she'll find KO-35 unsatisfactory?"

"It's not what she's used to," he admitted. "But no, not really." Well, maybe a little. "She thinks she could adjust. It's just that... Karone isn't. Adjusting."

Ashley was always encouraging him to talk about his feelings.

"She just doesn't know what to do with herself," he said. "And she doesn't like any of my suggestions."

"Have you considered making fewer of them?" DECA asked, and Andros decided that when Ashley got back he was telling her yet again that talking didn't fix things.

"I'm just trying to help her." He was her brother.

"Help who?"

The unexpected addition to their conversation startled him more than it should have. His reflexes couldn't be _that_ out of practice. Andros jumped, his heart racing as he spun around to face the Green Ranger, who watched him with a bemused expression.

"No one," Andros said. "Damon, right?"

"Yeah," he said. "You're not with the others?"

"No, I was just..." He shrugged. It was a trick he'd learned on Earth, where everyone liked to ask him questions. "You're not either."

"Early shift tomorrow. I figured I shouldn't stay out too late." Damon nodded towards the tablet in Andros's hand. "Everything okay?"

"All fine," Andros said. Abashed now that he'd been caught, he added, "Better than I expected."

"I try." Damon smiled. "There was a learning curve, I won't lie. I didn't think we'd be needing her to fly."

Damon leaned against the engine frame, and Andros retreated a few steps to slouch against the ladder with the tablet tucked under his arm.

"Yeah." Andros glanced at DECA again, sure that if she could shrug at him, she would. "That wasn't part of the plan."

"I gotta ask," Damon said. "Why a _museum_?"

"You're asking the wrong person." Andros tilted his head in the direction of DECA's nearest eye. He thought it had been a terrible cover story, himself. Zhane thought it was hilarious, and also that Andros had no business judging other people's disguises."It was _her_ idea."

"Oh yeah?" But he noticed that Damon looked more amused than surprised.

"To give credit where it's due, it was Alpha's idea," DECA informed them.

"You think he knew?" Damon asked. With one hand, he gestured vaguely. "About... all of this?"

Andros shrugged.

Another thing that Zhane was right about, then. He'd asked Andros if he was sure, when he sealed up the morphers.

Yes, Andros said. Dark Specter was gone.

There would be others, Zhane argued. There always were.

Well, he knew where his morpher was if he needed it.

Zhane held onto his. Just in case.

Who'd have thought that of the pair of them, _Andros_ would be the optimist? The idea was unnerving.

"Probably," he admitted, when he realized that Damon was still waiting for an answer. "Alpha knows sometimes. And Zordon's reach only went so far."

Andros had never asked Alpha how it worked, and he could only guess now. Maybe it was some sense that Zordon had taught Alpha to refine during their millennia together, or maybe it was some sensor in his hardware. Maybe it was just a feeling, like the one Zhane had, that whenever you went into dark, unknown places, you should carry a light with you.

"And the morphers?"

"They were as safe here as anywhere," Andros said. "And... if Alpha was right, we thought you might need them."

"So," Damon said, following Andros's gaze to DECA. "Alpha wanted to go, and you decided to come with?"

"That is correct," DECA said. "Company aside, Terra Venture is voyaging into systems where the Megaship has never flown."

Andros used to sit and contemplate the vastness of space, and the insurmountable odds of finding Karone amongst the innumerable planets. Infinity no longer seemed so bleak to him, but he didn't share DECA's sense of adventure about it, either.

"Wow," Damon said. "I guess I thought you'd seen it all."

"Many of our previous missions were confined to the space occupied by Dark Specter's soldiers and other members of the Alliance," DECA explained.

"So you flew around a lot, but mostly to the same places."

"There were personal excursions on occasion," DECA allowed, "but otherwise your summation is correct."

"So," Damon said. "How's this living up to your expectations?"

"I've found it stimulating, so far."

"It's not what _I_ signed up for, that's for sure," Damon said. "I gotta tell you, I thought I won the lottery with this job at first."

"Damon's initial assignment on Terra Venture was to perform routine maintenance on the Astro Megaship," DECA explained. "Which he did diligently, and with above average competence."

"Above average, seriously?"

"Is that not sufficiently complimentary?"

"What _ever_." Damon huffed at her. "So there I am, just doing _my job_ , and we haven't even launched yet when Kai shows up with the idea that he's going to fly the Megaship through some kind of interdimensional portal—"

"As I recall," DECA interjected, "you were the one to fly through the wormhole."

"Yeah," Damon retorted, "because Kai would've _crashed you_."

Andros looked down before either of them could see him smile.

"Then the next thing I know, I'm pulling a sword out of a rock like I'm freaking King Arthur, and Furio's turning everyone to stone and Mike fell into a chasm." Damon shook his head. "The next thing after _that_ , I'm the Green Ranger."

What would Zhane say here, or Ashley? Or TJ. TJ always said the right things. He'd tried to teach Andros too, for all the good it did.

"They've all done well, despite their lack of prior training," DECA said, and Andros gave her a grateful look for rescuing him from not knowing what to say.

"Zhane and I trained for years before we became Rangers." It wasn't a personal admission, exactly. And it was true. "The rest of my team, the ones from Earth, they were like you."

He'd found out later that it was something of an Earth tradition, to pick completely untrained and untried teenagers to be their Rangers and to take a trial by fire approach to training. Zordon's logic was beyond him, but he couldn't deny that it worked. Somehow.

"I guess it ended up okay. For you guys."

"Yeah. I guess." _Okay_ was a relative term. There were some wounds that would never heal, some things that could never be set right, time lost that could never be recouped... but their mission had turned out better than he had ever dared hope. It was the after that he was having trouble with, but that was definitely a personal admission. Andros cleared his throat. "I'm glad you're taking good care of the Megaship."

"I think she's been taking good care of us," Damon said, laying a fond hand against one of the engine consoles. "Do you miss it?"

"Sometimes," he said, but it wasn't really the ship itself that he missed. "I would've gotten here faster with the Megaship."

"How _did_ you get here?"

"KO-35 sent me to Onyx." In hindsight, that Onyx Tavern still had patrons aplenty should've been another clue that Zordon's light hadn't been enough. "They thought one of the supply ship pilots was shorting them and selling the extra on the black market. Which she was, but while I was there I heard rumors about the data cards. I followed them here."

And the others, he suspected, were following _him_. He wasn't sure because there hadn't been time for anyone to yell at him yet—which he didn't even deserve, because he hadn't _meant_ to go off on his own this time. There just hadn't been time to wait. He'd told Karone where he was going. She might have told Zhane, who had probably told everyone else, who had definitely borrowed a NASADA craft to come after him.

It was lucky they had, though. Otherwise they would have been too far away to receive Alpha's distress signal, and Andros was glad they'd shown up when they did. He could remember the pain of fighting their evil selves well enough that he wouldn't have been surprised to look down and find himself still wearing the bruises he'd acquired the first time around.

"I'm glad you did," Damon said. "You really can't stay awhile?"

"A few days, I think," Andros said. "The others really are needed back on Earth, and I have to get back to KO-35."

It was nice, though. It made him want to take the time that he knew they shouldn't spare, to have everyone back together here. Just for a little while.

"How is it?" Damon asked. "Earth. We don't get much news anymore."

That's right, Andros thought. They would've lost video contact with Earth months ago, but other lines of communication would've been stable until recently.

"Safe," he said.

Damon waited, and Andros tried to think of something else that he could say. He knew there was more to Earth than Angel Grove, but he hadn't had time to explore. Damon should've asked one of the others.

"The others say the GSA is considering another colony, but nothing's been decided yet. They say Aquitar might be sending a delegation to establish diplomatic ties, but nothing's been decided about that, either." He wasn't sure why the people of Earth were by and large still so baffled by the existence of life on worlds outside of their own. He figured after the third or fourth invasion, they would've caught on.

"Aquitar?" Damon asked.

"A water planet," DECA said. "Its people are humanoid, with some physical characteristics necessary to survive in their environment."

"What, like... mermaids?"

"No," Andros said. "Mermaids aren't real."

Damon gave him a skeptical look. "Really?"

"DECA?"

"While Aquitians aren't merpeople as I believe you're defining them, I'm not prepared to say definitively that they do not exist anywhere."

"You just don't like being wrong." But that was never a smart thing to say to DECA, so he added, "But it's a big universe. I guess it's possible."

How had they ended up debating the existence of merpeople? This was what came of talking to people.

"I hope that's not the new world Terra Venture finds," Damon said. "Nothing against merpeople, but—" He gestured to his neck. "No gills."

"Gills may not be necessary," DECA said. "Andros and Zhane always found the accommodations on Aquitar to be satisfactory."

"They get a lot of off-planet visitors," Andros explained. "They've got this—it's almost as big as some cities on KO-35, but it's this underwater dome."

"That does sound cool," Damon admitted. "But maybe not somewhere I'd want to live forever, assuming the merpeople would even want us to stay. I don't know what I had in mind, though. I just hope Trakeena's gone by the time we get there."

A feeling Andros knew only too well.

"You seem like you're doing fine." He had no idea, honestly, but DECA seemed to think so.

"Thanks." Damon smiled briefly. "That means a lot, coming from you."

That made him vaguely uncomfortable, though he wasn't sure why.

"You guy will at least keep in touch, right?" Damon asked. "Once we land, we'll able to set up some kind of communication relay. At least to Earth."

Keeping in touch wasn't really one of Andros's strong suits, but he nodded. "KO-35 can always use more friends," he admitted. Depending on where they ended up, Terra Venture might not even be impractically far from the Karova system. They weren't really moving that fast. "You're welcome to visit. It's not much right now, but we do have resources you can't find on Earth. It might help you to get started, wherever you end up."

"Yeah?"

"Alpha and DECA will bring the Megaship home eventually," he said. "You guys can come along for the ride."

"I don't know about the others," Damon said, "but I'm in. What do you say, DECA?"

"I look forward to it."


End file.
